iFly, Kansas City, MO

“Hey! There’s a tattoo parlor! Maybe we get matching tattoos for our 20^th anniversary?!” I joked.

This was my shocking suggestion as Tim and I were discussing what we should do for Columbus Day weekend. We got married the same weekend 20 years prior. While Army life would take him away for the actual day of our anniversary, we would be in Kansas City for part of the long weekend. I wondered out loud what we should do to celebrate.

“OR,” I said, “We could go skydiving!”

I was going for shock and awe.

Oh, we are silly people. Tim laughed with me since he knew he wouldn’t get me to jump out of a perfectly good airplane! I’m a Naval pilot’s daughter, after all. I know better!

But seriously, what would we do on a Sunday evening in October in Kansas City, MO? We would have all of Sunday afternoon to hang out at the hotel pool and enjoy a good KC BBQ dinner. OR, we could embrace the journey!

“Do you remember the piece we saw on the kids’ news show about indoor skydiving? The 11-year-old said he wanted to do that for his birthday. We could do an early birthday present!” I said.

I thought I was being practical, yet slightly edgy.   Regular skydiving was out but indoor skydiving I could do.

After 20 years, you’d think I’d know not to dip my toe into the realm of bright ideas. My husband is the king of polishing bright ideas to make them shine like the sun.

“That’s a great idea. Let me look at it!” my husband said while pulling up the website on his phone.

And that’s when I knew.  We were going to go skydiving for our combined anniversary/early birthday present!

On the Road to Fun

iFly, an indoor skydiving experience, had a location in Kansas City, MO. Once Tim called to get the details about the best package for our family and paid for our reservation, we got an email with release forms to sign. Then, we needed to plan our big surprise reveal to for the boys and pack our bags for our Kansas City adventure.

As I said in the blog about the Lego build at the National Cathedral, we like to keep our boys guessing about what the surprises will be during otherwise mundane trips.

They asked a few times over the week before our trip, “What are we going to do? Are we going somewhere? Are we going to just stay in the hotel? I hope the hotel is better than the last one we stayed in.”

That story is in need of a tell-all blog. Certainly, not the kind of adventure we here at PCS Adventures would like to advocate, but I digress.

Later one child happened to see me looking at a confirmation email. He started to suspect we might be going to an indoor skydiving experience. I played dumb. Clueless. Obtuse.

After church we got in the car and headed east. Thirty minutes into our trip, we finally let the boys start asking questions.

“Ok boys, we are on the interstate. Do you have any guesses?” I asked.

“I don’t, but he does,” one of the boys said.

There was some banter back and forth among my three men.

“Umm, no, I don’t know,” said the other boy.

I wondered if he was non-committal because he thought that indoor skydiving might be too good to be true.

“Do you remember the piece on the news about indoor skydiving?” I asked.

“I knew it!” I heard from behind me.

“NO WAY!” I heard the other one gasp loudly.

Even though the excitement in the car became palpable, the two-hour drive seemed to go abnormally fast. We planned to arrive 30 minutes early plus we added some time for traffic. Still, we got to IFly about an hour before our flight time.

This Way Up

We knew we were in the right place.  When we pulled in the parking lot we saw “INDOOR SKYDIVING” across the side of the building.  On the other side facing the highway was “IFLY” in white lettering. We parked, gathered our belongings and wondered what awaited us on the other side of the front doors.

A young woman working the front desk greeted us as we entered the building. In the vestibule, I noticed IFLY written in bold lettering across several of the walls. Red blocks of color helped set the tone. The red seemed to shout, “BE BRAVE!” One definitely needs to be brave to fly.

We checked in and watched other “fliers” while waiting our turn. The dark room filled with about 20 people showcased a tall, illuminated glass tube.  The two people in the tube wore coveralls and a helmet. One was standing and one was floating, looking like he was trying to imitate Superman. Both people’s clothes whipped back and forth as if they were in a prairie wind.

We sat down on a bench to watch.  The boys focused their rapt attention on the two people in the tube.  This hour was going to be a long wait. We were all very excited.

Suiting Up for Flight

Thirty minutes before our “flight time” our instructor, Christian, greeted us and asked us to follow him to get our flight suits. We each received our coveralls and helmet plus disposable goggles and earplugs. We were asked to put all our jewelry (even wedding rings) and other belongings in a locker.  Then we followed Christian to a classroom adjacent to the big room with the glass tube.

We donned our flight suits and watched a video preparing us for our flights. The wind tunnel was so loud we would need to wear ear plugs. That meant we needed a new way to communicate. We learned some basic hand signals so we could follow Christian’s instructions during our flights. After the video he quizzed us to be sure we were paying attention. Once we passed the quiz with flying colors, we followed him to the flight tube.

The waiting area for those in the cue to fly was a clever set up. To enter the tube, we went through a glass door into a glass hall that was wide enough for a bench to hold about 8 adults. The narrow hall led to the flight tube.

From the bench we could see that the floor was actually netting that allowed the wind from the enormous fan below to hold up the flier. If we got close to the glass wall and looked up, we could see the ceiling that seemed to be a mechanism producing some suction.

The tube was big enough for Christian to stand and seemingly dance around the flier. He kept the flier aloft by signing to him what to do during the 75-second flight.

Taking Flight

Our family sat on the bench in the order we would take flight: Dad, boy #2, Mom, and boy #1. We each took our first 75-second flight while the others watched from the glass-enclosed bench.

As I entered the door to the wind-tunnel/flight tube I stretched my hands above me like Superman and leaned forward as if to do a belly flop in the air. Christian helped to steady me and told me whether to straighten my legs or widen my arms so that I might float more easily. 

Right about then, I noticed a man sitting at a computer near the timer. The timer counted down how much time I had left for my flight. I soon realized that he was also filming my flight. When I missed a cue from Christian the red numbers on the clock switched to the words: “straight legs”. I straightened my legs and got a thumbs-up from the man.

The wind spun me around at a pleasant speed. I floated up and down gently, as if on a hammock, but without the swinging. I was told I would not be motion sick, even though I sometimes have that problem. The propaganda was right: no nausea! It was fun and exhilarating! All too soon my last five seconds arrived and Christian showed me to the door where the rest of my family waited.

Our package allow each of us to fly two times. The second time I knew a little more of what to expect and tried to “perfect” my technique. By the end of my turn, I was satisfied that I had flown two times.

All of my family was fired up about the experience. After we each had our two turns, we got to see Christian do a demonstration. He seemed to fly like Spiderman through the tube. Once at the top he zoomed down to the bottom catching himself on his feet. He performed a 60-second choreographed display of flying. It was really pretty amazing.

To help us remember the fun of flying, we received a complementary video with our package and paid for some pictures as well.  Upon seeing the pictures, I am not sure it looked like I was having a good time: I was wearing my concentration face.

When I watched the video, I noticed that Christian looked like he was having fun. He seemed to dance with me. He stayed at my side and gave me hand cues to help me control myself, but he was graceful and had a sense of panache as he worked with me that I didn’t notice at the time of my flight.

Eventually our time came to an end. We took our own pictures and returned our flight suits all while discussing the great experience of flying.

And then we bought another flight for our 21st anniversary.

Closest Military Installations

MWR Locations Nearby

If You Go:

• More information about prices and packages are available here
• We are currently in Kansas, so we went to the Kansas City I Fly. Please go here for more locations.
• FAQs about iFly